Alright well tonight We're gonna switch gears a little bit from what we've been doing. We've been of course going through the book of Genesis But I Wanted to Add into the mix this year a study in the book of Psalms And And I'm not going to give up on Genesis. But what I'd like to do is, ever so often, on a Tuesday night, go into Psalms. And I may even add a third a third book of the Old Testament into the rotation, um, as the year progresses, but we'll see. Um, so, so, uh, you can go and be turning into, into Psalms. We're not, uh, we're not going to actually dive into, into any particular chapter this, this evening, but this will be more of an introduction. Psalms Psalms is the Biggest book in your Bible It is it is the One with 150 chapters Now I always kind of struggle with book introductions. Kind of hard to know how much material to give and all of that sort of thing. For this study, though, I thought we would kind of, what I've done is I've kind of gathered some material from different sources. One source being the MacArthur Study Bible. Another source being the Spurgeon Study Bible. And then the third source being Old Testament Survey by Milburn Cockrell. Of course, there are other source materials that you can gather from whenever you get an overview of a Bible book. And certainly I recommend it. whether you're reading through it or studying it, just kind of get some background in that sort of thing. There are several different handbooks and Bible surveys and commentaries that you can look at and study through and that sort of thing, kind of give you a background information of the text. We are very blessed in our country and in this time period to have lots of tools at our disposal. The book itself, of course, is called the Psalms. The entire collection of Psalms is entitled praises in the Hebrew text. Later rabbis took this and they often designated it as the book of praises. The Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, you've heard me talk about that before in some of our other studies, the Greek translation of the Old Testament labeled it Psalms. And we certainly can see that brought forth in the New Testament, which of course was in the Greek. If you go with me to Luke chapter 20, Luke chapter 20, Verse 42. For David himself says in the book of Psalms, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies as a footstool for your feet so so jesus as he was there and uh, and and talking about this he says david says in the book of psalms In acts chapter 1 in verse 20 we find similarly it is written in the book of psalms And so we find that Jesus, in the early church, they called this the Book of Psalms. This is what it was called in the Greek. This is what the early church knew it as. This is what Jesus referred to it as. And this is what we know it as, Book of Psalms. The Greek verb from which the noun Psalms comes basically denotes the plucking or twanging of strings or a poem to be sung to a stringed instrument so that an association with musical accompaniment is implied. The Psalms constituted then Israel's ancient God-breathed hymn book, which defined proper spirit and content. These ancient worshipers of Yahweh God, knew nothing of Amazing Grace or Rock of Ages. They knew nothing of Abide With Me or It Is Well With My Soul. They knew nothing of those old hymns that we know and appreciate and grew up on. But they would lift up their voices and sing from the Book of Psalms, the Psalter, the most ancient of songs that were sung by God's people. Whether they were in the temple or in the synagogue or wherever they were gathered, they would sing from these sacred pages in worship. And indeed, under the new covenant, In the New Testament churches, these songs are still to be sung. Over in the book of Ephesians chapter 5. Ephesians chapter 5. Begin verse 18 and do not get drunk with wine for that is dissipation But be filled with the spirit speaking to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs Singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father, and being subject to one another in the fear of Christ. And so these speaking to yourself in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, Some say that the early church, they had the Psalter and then they had other songs. Others say that the Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs were divisions of the Psalter. But whatever the case may be, one thing is for sure, that the early church was still singing the Psalms. Over in Colossians chapter 3. Colossians chapter 3. Verse 16, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly with all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with gratefulness in your hearts to God. And so, not only to Ephesus, but also to Colossians by extension to every one of the Lord's churches throughout this age were told that we're to be singing these divinely inspired, these God-breathed songs, these psalms that have been given. They are excellent. Scriptural and beautiful. They are a form of poetry. In fact, if you look there in your Bibles, depending on which translation you've got, but if you're following along with me in the LSB, you'll notice You'll notice that when you flip back over to the Psalms, you'll notice that the text format is different than what it is in other passages of scripture. And that is because it is poetic form of literature. The Psalms are poetic in style. Now, early Hebrew poetry had neither rhyme nor meter. The distinctive feature was parallelism. Every verse must consist of two members, the second of which must more or less completely the expectation raised by the first. And so it's a form of poetry, and we can catch onto that as we read through it. When we get into a book like this, the question is, who wrote it? Who wrote the book of Psalms? Who wrote the Psalter? And from the divine perspective, of course, as it is true of all of the scriptures, from the divine perspective it is God who wrote it over in 2nd Timothy chapter 3 2nd Timothy chapter 3 in verse 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be equipped, having been thoroughly equipped for every good work. And so from one perspective, we can say, oh, this is God's Word. And that would be absolutely correct. But from the human side, it gets very complicated. Whereas you can go to 1st Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, you can say, oh, these are Paul's letters. You go to 1st, 2nd, or 3rd John, you say, oh, these are John's letters. Matthew, and say, oh, this is Matthew's gospel, or Mark, and say, oh, this is Mark who wrote this, but the Psalter, the book of Psalms, actually, we can identify a collection of more than seven composers, and some of the Psalms, we don't know who wrote them. King David Of course, being the primary one, he wrote at least 73 out of the 150 Psalms. And so if you begin to leaf through the book of Psalms, you'll see at the top of the Psalms, a lot of times you'll see a Psalm of David, for instance, at the top of Psalms three. It says a psalm of David when he fled from Absalom his son. Psalm 4, there's a header there that says, for the choir director with stringed instruments, a Psalm of David. And so we begin to see those things. A lot of times we might skip over them because they're not Bible verses per se, but they do indicate who wrote them. 73 out of the 150 were written by David. But the sons of Korah, accounted for 10 of them. And so, for instance, in Psalm 42, Psalm 42, for the choir director, a masculine of the sons of Korah, Psalm 44, for the choir director of the Sons of Korah, a Masculine. You say, what in the world is a Masculine? Well, that's possibly a contemplative, skillful type Psalm. In fact, if you go back to the beginning of the book of Psalms, the LSB translators put the following expressions occur often in the Psalms. And so, now might be a good time to look at those very quickly. One is Selah. You'll find that quite frequently in the Psalms. That's possibly indicates a pause. a crescendo or musical interlude. A masculine is possibly contemplative, didactic, or skillful psalm. A mixtum is possibly a pygamatic poem or atonement psalm. And so these are some things that you might run into as you're reading through the Psalms. So the sons of Korah though, they accounted for 10. And as we go through the Psalms, we'll look at these folks a little bit more. Asaph contributed 12 Psalms. So for instance, Psalm 50 being one of them. Psalm 50 Psalm 50 it says God himself is judge and then right under that it says a psalm of ASAP. I Other penmen included Solomon. So Solomon had a hand in composing at least a couple of the Psalms. Psalm 72, for instance, Psalm 72. You'll see there it says, of Solomon up there near the top. We often think of Solomon as being the writer of Proverbs Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon. Yeah, he did those things, but he also had a hand in the Psalms as well. Psalm 127 as well, he also wrote that one. Moses also was involved in writing at least one psalm, Psalm 90. Psalm 90. A prayer of Moses, the man of God. Psalm 88 was written by Heman. At least he had a hand in it because it says a song a psalm of the sons of Korah for the choir director according to the my hey, let's lay it and off a masculine of human the Ezra height And so we see human was involved in that chapter Psalm 89 the 89th Psalm and There's a fellow by the name of Ethan, a masculine of Ethan, the Israelite. So that of all the named writers of the Psalms, that leaves about 50 Psalms that remain anonymous in their authorship. although Ezra is thought to be the author of some. So when you look at these fellows, the time range of the Psalms is extending from Moses, which would have been, I don't know, maybe about 1410 BC to the late or early 5th century BC, which spans about 900 years of Jewish history. So if they were put in chronological order by the date that they were written, Psalm 90 would probably be the first one. And then they'd go on through, but they weren't put in that order. It would seem as though that they were, of course, composed over a period of many years, but they began to be collected into a body of literature in the time of David. And we see that in First Chronicles chapters 15 and 16, we see that going on there. And even though we have it as one book, the book of Psalms. You may have noticed as we were kind of flipping through there and looking at some of these Psalms, you may have, uh, you may have noticed that there's actually, um, multiple books. So for instance, if you're close to where we left off and I mentioned Psalm 90, go over there for a moment. Psalm 90, and just right above Psalm 90, you'll see book four written. There's actually five divisions, five divisions, five books that are embraced in this collection of books. And so this gets to be pretty interesting because the Bible is not just one book. The Bible is 66 books. And so just like the Bible is not just one book, it's multiple books. Psalms is not just one book, it's five books. The first was, is chapters one through 41. The second was 42 through 72. And so the first book ends with the doxology and a double amen. Then the second ends the same way with the further addition that the prayers of David, the son of Jesse are ended. The third, 73 through 89, Ends with a somewhat different doxology in a in a double amen So you see that if you're still there on that page you see there in the last verse of chapter 89 verse 52 you see that Blessed be Yahweh forever. Amen. And amen. That's the way that that book ends The fourth book chapter 19 through 106 ends with doxology amen and Well, it ends with praise y'all in the LSB, but in the King James translation and in other English translations, it'll say hallelujah, because that's what hallelujah means, praise y'all, praise Yahweh. then and then the final book chapters 107 to 150 and that closes out of course the Psalms it ends with repeated hallelujahs and as our as our Translation goes praise him praise y'all and so it's a it's a very worshipful full of praise the psalms are definitely definitely worthy of our consideration as God's people in our day today, just as they were in the days of the Old Testament and the early church. There are different groupings of Psalms. Besides the books, there are messianic Psalms. And so by that, I mean, there are Psalms that prophesy of the coming the coming Jesus, the coming Messiah. You know, a lot of times we think of the prophets, and certainly there are many prophecies to be found in the books of the prophets, and a lot of times when we think of the Psalms, we think of Psalm 23, passages like that, but you know, You know, and for instance, before you get to Psalm 23, there's Psalm 22. In Psalm 22, how does Psalm 22 start? Verse 1, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What was it that Jesus cried out there on the cross? You see, this is all pointing to Him who would come. So there are the Messianic Psalms. So you'll find Jesus on the pages of the Scriptures in the Psalms. You'll find the so-called Hallelujah Psalms. These are like Psalms 106, 111, 112, 113, 135, Psalms 144 to 150. These are the Psalms that begin with Hallelujah or As our legacy standard Bible has it, praise y'all, or as the King James has it, praise ye the Lord. All of these Psalms, all but two of them end with this way. These are Hallelujah Psalms. These are beautiful Psalms, Psalms that are often often the very memorable set to music. There are Trinity Psalms. So we see the Godhead in the Psalter as well. Psalm 22 through 24, Psalm 56 through 58. There are imprecatory Psalms. We'll look at some of those as we go through as well, but Psalms like, Psalms 35, Psalms 58, Psalms 59, 69, 83, 109, 137. So what are impregnatory Psalms? Well, let's look at one of them, Psalm 35, just as an example. We'll just read the first three verses just to give you an idea of what kind of Psalms these are. Contend, O Yahweh, with those who contend with me. Fight against those who fight against me. Take hold of shield and large shield and rise up for my help. Draw also the spear and the battle ax to meet those who pursue me. Say to my soul, I am your salvation. And so these are prayers of David. I believe David wrote all the imprecatory Psalms where he's praying that Yahweh, the Lord, will destroy his enemies. There are Psalms that we find the omniscience of God, the omnipresence of God, the omnipotence of God. Much to be found in the Psalms, and let us not forget that One preacher said that the Psalms are God's medicine chest, that we can go there for great strength when we need it, encouragement, help in time of need as we take our troubles to the throne of grace and we don't know where else to turn. We go to our Lord in prayer, we can find comfort and help in the pages of the scriptures, primarily in Psalms. In fact, Charles Spurgeon, as he wrote about the Psalms, he says, God permitted David to go through many experiences, not so much for himself as for the good of succeeding generations. Whenever we look into David's Psalms, we may somewhere or other see ourselves. I never get into a corner, but I find David in that corner. I think I was never so low that I could not find that David was lower. Never climbed so high that I could not find that David was up above me ready to sing his song upon a stringed instrument even as I could sing mine." And so I'm thankful for this God-breathed hymn book that we have been given. The songs are to be sung. They're to be read. They're to be prayed. They're to be preached. They're an essential part of our worship, not only as we gather together as a church, but also in our daily lives. We ought to memorize the Psalms. We ought to read the Psalms. We ought to study the Psalms. And I trust that this series, like I said, I'm not going to be in it every Tuesday night, but I trust as we go through the Psalms that it'll be a blessing. I know that the times that I've spent in the Psalms have been a blessing to me. The very first book of the Bible I ever cracked open to preach through was Psalms. We were doing a radio broadcast for the blind and the shut-ins, my grandfather and I. He asked me to take it over. I didn't know what to do, so I just opened up the Psalms and started preaching through the Psalms. And for 15 minutes every day we went through the Psalms. Me and a bunch of people that I never even met or talked to except for maybe two or three of them. But it was a blessing to me and I trust that this will be a blessing to you as well. So as we close this introduction out, does anybody have any questions this evening?